The light went out in 1978. We keep the tower anyway.

The tower was raised in 1881 out of sandstone quarried a kilometre away at Kurnell and whitewashed by hand twice a year, a job that took two men three days and a bosun's chair. Three keepers lived on the headland with their families. The logbooks they left behind record the weather at eight and four, the ships that passed, the whales that went by in June, and — in the entry for 14 July 1911 — the night the boat shed went into the sea.

The light itself was a fourth-order lens by Chance Brothers of Birmingham, turning on a bath of mercury and visible eighteen nautical miles out. It burned kerosene, then petroleum vapour, then electricity from 1939. In 1978 the shipping lane into Port Botany was handed to an automated beacon and the station was closed. The lens was crated, the residences were later demolished, and the tower went dark for twenty-nine years.

The society has 41 members and 14 volunteers on the gate rota. A duty keeper walks the headland every morning, logs the weather at 08:00 and 16:00 whether or not anything happens, checks the lantern for water ingress, and opens the small gate on the seaward side at ten. It is not a posting and it is not paid. It is a list on a cupboard door.

Three tours run each day the tower is open. They are led by whichever volunteers are on that day, so expect the lantern room to be explained by somebody who re-puttied it. Book by phone or email, or turn up ten minutes before a start time; the gate closes at 14:30 for the last climb. Tours are cancelled when the wind is forecast over 50 km/h or the park is closed for fire danger.

Concessions $8. Children under 12 free with an adult. Members free, always. National parks pass holders $2 off. Schools and groups of ten or more are booked by arrangement — a group of twenty is two climbs, not one.

Closed shoes are required for the tower: the upper treads are tallowwood and the tread depth is 22 cm, which is shallower than a modern stair. The lantern-room doorway is 60 cm wide. The museum, the store and the viewing platform are step-free, and the headland walk is on a formed track with a 400 m section that gets sharp.

Email bookings or ring (02) 9668 4471 — a volunteer answers, usually on a Saturday.

The museum is the assistant keeper's cottage, three rooms and a store, opened to the public in 2019. It is small on purpose: we would rather show twelve things properly than forty badly labelled. The reading desk is the exception — anyone may ask to see a logbook and handle it, with gloves we provide.

We do not have a building fund or a development plan. The money goes into the fabric of the tower, a few hundred dollars at a time, and the rates below are set so you can see exactly what your year buys. Members get the museum and the tours free, four newsletters, and an invitation to the winter lighting — the one evening a year the lamp goes back into the lens.

We always need hands: the Wednesday work party, the gate rota, cataloguing indoors, and somebody who can drive a trailer without taking the corner off it. We are an incorporated association run by its members, and the accounts go to the annual general meeting in August, where anybody may read them.

Ask about membership, or come to a work party first and decide afterwards.